Facing Down the Danger

This is the moment we were warned about.

Welcome to 2024.

This year still feels like a distant future to me, because the last decade has been a terrifying blur. I still feel like I’m stuck in 2013, a year in which events occurred that changed the way I looked at the world. The Events I’m referring to weren’t as significant to most of the people I know, but they changed the context of the world for me in the same way the September 11 terror attacks in New York changed the context for everyone during the previous decade.

I want to tell the story about what changed, but every time I sit down to try to compose my thoughts, to explain where I am and why these years have been so hard, I find that it is all too much to fit into a handful of paragraphs. Those paragraphs tend to raise more questions than they answer, requiring more paragraphs and more backstories if they’re going to make sense. Some of those are stories I can’t tell - and talking around the stories I can’t tell would require more text, more paragraphs… more than I think anyone will want to read.

After all, as a friend said to me in 2013, “Nobody wants to read your 2,000-word opinion about anything.”

So I sit here at the beginning of 2024, bracing myself for an awful possibility. There will be an election in November if all goes according to plan. The outcome should be obvious - it would be obvious if everyone talking about it followed the principles they claim to hold dear. Of course, since I became an adult person (about 1990-ish) I’ve observed that people frequently don’t understand the principles they claim to hold dear.

I started “Know Something” intending to lay down some of those fundamental principles as a way of helping others understand my story and my journey leading up to this moment in American history. I wanted to avoid posting the same kind of reactionary current events commentary that everyone else is writing. I wanted to be able to reach out to friends and family who are very much on the wrong side of this historic moment. And I wanted to tell my story without making it about me.

I haven’t been able to do that.

Part of me wants to give up because there are so many people in my life who claim to love me but don’t want to hear what I have to say. That part of me has convinced me to continually pull back inside myself, to say less, to wait and see. I think of that part as my “conservative” side. That part of me isn’t “good” or “bad” - it just is. It’s also the part of me that urges me to listen to others and to apply the critical thinking skills I talk about all the time to what I am hearing. That part of me would sit and gather evidence forever before allowing me to make up my mind or take a position on anything.

Another part of me wants to rage and thunder and scream in the faces of the frightened and complacent people around me. People who have refused to pay attention for years, and now act like they have some unearned wisdom to offer about the Way Things Should Be. People who make bad-faith arguments because they are unwilling to examine their assumptions. I know how counterproductive that is, but I also know that if I sit back and say nothing, I won’t change any of the minds that need to be changed. That part of me is the opposite of “conservative” - that is my “radical” side. It’s the part I have always been afraid of, the part that drives me to actually do things and has led to both my biggest failures and my greatest successes.

Everyone has these warring parts pushing them along. This moment in our history seems to be pushing those two parts together - not just for me, but for everyone.

And I have been letting that “conservative” side win for a long time without getting the results I want. It might be too late, now, and I might not achieve anything, but I think it might be time to let the “radical” say something.

Let’s hear what that side has to say and ask it some questions. Maybe then we’ll Know Something.